It’s been an amazing month. If you haven’t read part.1 go do that first! I’ve spent it in Costa Rica surfing and living the Pura Vida lifestyle. Ive learnt so much stuff that’s much more valuable then algebra or memorizing dates. I was there for 10 weeks and I met so many people and got to learn about what holidays and celebrations are like in Costa Rica. Actually that was one of the biggest culture shocks, they celebrate Christmas but it’s not the same at all. In Costa Rica life goes on as usual on Christmas. People still go to work, people go out for dinner, life doesn’t stop for Christmas. It really opened my eyes to how commercialized Christmas is in first world countries. There, the only thing that really matters is telling your family you love them and I think a lot of people have lost that aspect of the holiday, we’re so focused on presents we forget to be grateful for the people we love. On Christmas this year I went surfing with my friends and sat down and did a small gift exchange, we watched the sunset with all our friends and had a bonfire. Here’s some photos from my Christmas:

It was way less stressful and it made everyone happy. In Costa Rica, like I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been really falling in love with photography. I’ve found that my favourite thing about it is finding the beauty in everything, always looking for it and capturing it where people may not see it. For a long time I was trying to copy other peoples style of photography but I feel like I’ve finally found my own style.

One of my favourite photos:)

 

Music is a huge part of my everyday life I do not think I would be as happy without it but it’s also incredible how much I associated memories with music. During my trip I made a couple of playlists to listen to so I can go back and hear those songs and remember Costa Rica. If you would like to see my playlists you can see that here: 

 

While I was there I also saw the importance of enjoy the little things and how much that can improve your mental health. I know I’ve been told this so many times from my mom, my friends, the media but it’s one of those things I had to learn for myself. In those last weeks of my vacation I made sure to enjoy little things like seeing a perfect wave or helping a baby turtle or seeing a rainbow and a beautiful sunset at the same time. This mostly clicked for me after seeing all the people there go down for sunset every night. People always tried their hardest to make it down to the beach to watch the sunset with their friends. We made so many friends that way, friends we will cherish forever. This is probably one of the most important things I learned in Costa Rica and I’ve taken this lesson home. When we got home it was cold and snowing and if you know me you know I very much dislike winter but instead of being miserable I appreciated the little things like have a snowflake land perfectly on my nose or holding hands with someone to keep our hands warm. I’m excited to go back but for now I’m in no rush for anything to happen.

Everyone watching sunset together